While he walked he worked the problem, the way he had been ever since Sunny told him how much money she was going to come into soon.
When she’d come to Cobbler Cove, she’d needed a place to stay, a job, and something to remind her of who she was before Winston Perry destroyed her life.Natalie Crawford had taken care of the place to stay, and he’d had a desk overflowing with work to be done.He’d needed her help, and she’d needed the job.
Same deal with the house.With or without the upcoming photo shoot, it needed renovation.And she had the expertise to do it right.He’d needed her help, and he was pretty sure she’d needed the project too.
But now, all of her needs were gone.All of them at once, paid off in full by her dead husband.She didn’t need Hank’s job.She didn’t need his house.She could buy her own house anywhere she wanted to live and never once worry about what the groceries were costing again.
Which left only one question.The question that had been standing on his chest ever since the dream.If Perry’s money took away every single thing she’d ever needed him for, what was left between them?
He knew what he was worth as a husband.He’d had it explained to him in seven succinct words in that courthouse hallway.
He’d done his best to hold Lorraine together for ten years, provided for her, managed life around her, doctored her, taken her to rehab, and been there to pick her up when she came out.
And she had rotted in his care.
There was only one conclusion he could draw from that.The people he loved were better off the moment he stopped trying to care for them and they stopped needing him.Madison was the lone exception to that, but she was still a minor and not yet capable of taking care of herself.Some days he suspected the only reason he hadn’t ruined her yet was the four Carter children teaching her how to laugh.
He walked down to the lake and stood there with his hands in his pockets, staring at the gray water as the sky gradually lightened around him.
Somewhere in there, the thing got decided, not in a single moment of decision but as a slow, creeping understanding of what he had to do.
He would not be one more wall standing between Sunny Carter and the life she deserved.She’d spent ten years trapped in the life Winston Perry created for himself.She’d been accessory to him.A beautiful, expensive possession like one of his fancy cars or expensive paintings.
She should not spend one more minute of her life trapped in a life another man wanted with her.If the only honest gift he had left to give her was an open door and the freedom to leave, then he would, by God, give it to her.
And, he would do it in a way that she never had to ask for it.
He’d watched surgeons amputate a man’s leg to save the man’s life.He told himself this was that as he walked home in the brightening morning, his decision settling into him like frost reaching into the ground.
A fancy black Suburban passed him on the Shoemacher driveway Thursday morning, headed out as Hank headed in.He recognized the driver as Lincoln Sutter, the attorney who’d helped him and Reno get custody of Madison.Lincoln lifted two fingers off the wheel in a traditional rancher’s salute.Hank returned the gesture.
So Lucas had made the call.That was something.
The day nurse met him at the door with her report.Worse nights.Less appetite.Oxygen turned up another notch.She added, in the tone of a woman reporting a miracle or a stroke, she wasn’t sure which, “And he’s been writing, Two days now.Won’t let me see any of it.Hides it under the blanket as if I’m going to snatch it away from him.”
Lucas was propped up in the hospital bed with a lap desk across his knees.A stack of envelopes stood on the bed to Lucas’s left, and to his right stood an open box of stationery paper.When Hank approached, the old man fumbled to turn the page he was currently writing on face-down.There was ink on his fingers.That detail struck Hank incongruously.A man with days or weeks left to live had ink all over his hands like a schoolboy.
Hank didn’t ask what he was writing.That was Lucas’s business and none of his.He ran a quick physical exam instead.The crackle in the lungs had climbed higher in both lungs.The old man lost his breath now between sentences, and his sentences had gotten shorter to fit inside his available air to speak.
“Lawyer came,” Lucas said while Hank coiled the stethoscope.“Did what you told me.My will’s updated and signed.Appointed an executor.Wrote down all the information the lawyer said folks would need after I go.Passwords for my computer.Bank account and credit card numbers, monthly bills, where all the important legal documents are.”
“That’s good,” Hank replied.“I hope it’s a weight off your shoulders.I know your family will appreciate it.”
Lucas laid his hand on the face-down page.“Doing the rest of it now.Turns out ...”a breath “...I have more letters to write than I figured on.”
Lucas looked out the wall of windows at his empty pastures.Hank did the same, noting that the fences needed paint and the hay stood uncut.Down the valley the town shimmered in a summer haze.
“Funny thing,” Lucas said reflectively.“I built all this for my family.Worked like a dog to make money.Bought the land.Built this place up.Paid for braces and colleges and weddings I wasn’t welcome at.”
He had to take a half-dozen rasping breaths before he could resume.
“Told myself a man’s love is what he provides.And by golly, I provided.The checks always cleared, Doc.Every one.And what do I have to show for it?”The oxygen machine chugged quietly as he took several long pulls from his oxygen cannula.“Eight bedrooms upstairs.Not one of them slept in for years.”
The words bothered Hank like a splinter buried in his finger, tiny but painful, impossible to ignore.
“Are they coming?”Lucas asked.“My kids?”
“Bonnie’s calling them.You’ll know when I know.”
